Google expands plan to run own internet Google has entered the domain name resolution business, part of its ongoing effort to control just about everything you do on the net. This morning, the Mountain View Chocolate Factory unveiled the free Google Public DNS, a service that lets you resolve net domain names through Google-controlled servers. DNS - the Domain Name …
"The implications are a little disturbing," one Reg reader said in response to Google Public DNS. "This could easily be a valid attempt by Google to deal with certain holes in the extant DNS infrastructure. However it could just as easily be a bridge too far."
Yay! Bring me more vague paranoia dressed up as news, and include more non-committal reader comments please!
Here's my attempt:
This could be a good idea. Or it could be really, really bad.
You can use that in more or less any article you like!
One of the central strengths of DNS is that it's distributed, centralising DNS is just asking for a bigger single point of failure. I can imagine ISPs will start blocking these IP addresses, to simplify support if nothing else (you really wouldn't want to spend an hour trying to solve a name resolution problem only to find it isn't even your DNS being used...)
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Reading Google's page about this, it appears completely selfless: for our benefit only. And that rings alarm bells for me. In a way it would be better if they said it would have adverts on mistyped URLs. I really have to wonder how Google are benefiting from this, and the things I can think of seem a lot more sinister. When something seems too good to be true, it usually is.
> The insidiousness of this should begin to alarm government
Actually ambitous individuals within government would probably like nothing more than a centralised internet controlled by an easy to regulate corporate monopoly.
Extend that reach to the devices a majority of people use to access online services and problems like digital file copying can be conveniently eliminated thus offsetting the threat to the wealthy controlling elite's media business interests.
It would be a whole lot more profitable for the music moguls if everyone went back to listening to vinyl pressed recordings.. Similarly excercising state influence on key issues is much easier if the majority go back to being spoonfed broadcast programming.
Control the internet and your paymasters are many.
Centralised internet operated by a monopoly. DO NOT WANT.
Sorry to be commenting on the prose style, rather than the subject - but for some reason the use of ", well, " in written pieces has blossomed on the internet of late. It seems designed to mirror spoken language, where one might pause to think of an example to prove one's point, and use "well" to indicate what one is doing.
"I searched, well, everywhere".
"We wrote about it, well, last week".
In spoken language, this is fair enough - but writing is not done in realtime. One can pause during composition without the audience being aware of it, so there is no need for "well, errrm, aaaaand" or any of those "gather my thoughts" fillers.
Sorry to seem pedantic, but I've been noticing this a lot lately (not particularly in your fine publication, but thought I'd post here anyway). It smacks of an attempt to indicate the writer is casually confident and at ease - but writing has it's own tricks to achieve this, and writing down fake "vocal tricks" is, (well), highly lame.
(Beer icon because it's my birthday, yay!)
"Critic of an article's grammar? then check yours comment's before you post"
Didn't you mean "check you comments'/comment's (grammar) before you post" ? Or maybe "check yours" as in "your grammar" ?
Maybe my English is failing me here, but "check yours comment's" seems, well, wrong.
I may well have had a vino or three, or, well, had a glass or several, but didn't you mean "check your comments'/comment's (grammar) before you post"? Or was that a deliberate mistale just to keep the chain going? Over to someone ELSE...Me, I'm going up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.
Ok. here goes.... t the moment most people use their own ISPs DNS servers. The load is spread out and distributed. There is plenty of replication, which is how it was designed and this is a good thing. All these DNS servers would be too big a target for lawsuits.
However, if lots of people change to Google, either by choice, or they buy a device or use an operating system that has the settings preloaded most people won't even know what DNS is, no less how to change it.
Then at some point in the future a group such as the MPAA or CoS, etc. goes after a website in the USA and is granted a court order forcing Google to remove it from their DNS servers for copyright breaches, illegal content, or whatever. As a result this will disappear from potentially billions of peoples DNS and subsequently won't be reachable via email & web without using the IP address.
This is no different than when people loose their domain name registration when someone complains to GoDaddy or Network Solutions about a site. Bloody ridiculous that this happens, but it has been known in the past.
So you get a phone/webbooky with Android and it has preset Google IPs.
they'll know a lot about you in a few weeks .. what bank you login to, your pr0n sites, your newspapers, etc
and yes US Dept of f***wits will get access to that data
there's more than 1 reason to avoid Google/Android
................
last orders for Norfolk Browns - the original 3 breasted bird bred by and from true Norfolkians
Look, your local ISP is still going to operate a DNS. You don't have to use Chrone OS, or Google Search, in fact is doesn't take much effort to avoid google almost completely (though it is impossible to know who has ads on their site served by goole).
Google may have a hand in almost every aspect of the net, and now branching into voice, and soon i expect media. However, so long as they have competitors, and I have choice, and they follow federal and state laws on persopnal data collection, data use, disclosure, and allow me to opt out, then I really could care less.
That said, I use Google heavily. I actualy APPRECIATE the data they've collected on my behalf, and it makes life easier. I'm not paranoid by the fact that someone has lots of data on me, and uses that data to target ads for me. That means simply the ads I see are RELEVENT! It gets me places I want to be faster, and if they're adding security behind it to pretect me all the better.
Well here's one good thing in that it draws attention to the possibility of alternative DNS. I've been using OpenDNS for a while now. Amazing how much better is works that the ISPs sometimes (esp mobile broadband ones). Of course it does require getting techie with your router or 3G setup but it's worth the effort.
As for Google, I guess it's almost inevitable that ChromeOS will be locked in. So much for opensource. Centralised control of the internet is just what certain people would like (Mandelsson, China anyone? I think Apple created this worrying trend with the locked iphone but others are sure to follow
I think i'm starting t o go off Google is a similar way to going off MSFT about 20yrs ago............
This post has been deleted by its author
I see many advantages of Google setting up their global DNS system. They have the money to put a lot of power into it; to get a good implementation, to drive up security implementation and perhaps to get the standards improved. They will remove a huge load from existing ISPs and so reduce some of the effectiveness of DoS attacks. Will this help ISPs? A little I think, they will perhaps be able to spend a little less time chasing security issues and more time improving security implementation. Perhaps following some of the techniques that Google are using.
Is it for free? Not really, it just makes a bigger monolith and makes it harder for its competitors.
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